3 Comments on “Tip #3 of 20: You are already a goddess, so feel free to act like one.”

I agree/disagree with your advice re giving up women magazines. I realise they are a problem for body image, especially for generation Y, and yes, they are a selling catalogue for expensive products.

I am one of those women who really find them entertaining and I always peruse them at lunch time, to have a rest from my work, or when at the Doctor’s, just to see the photos. read the captions and, rarely, some articles on women issues. II see what I can find in the new trends that will fit me, flatter me or I like. I don’t expect them to tell me what I should like or how I should look like.

If you are a critical thinker you can easily discern things for what they are. Women magazines are lalaland territory, so I don’t expect them to be teaching me anything or try to compare myself to those anorexic 16y.o models or those gorgeous actresses who have been photoshoped and dressed divinely. I could look a million dollar buck if I went through the same thing.

I know that they selection of products and award winning products of the year are a brainwash, so it is up to the women to try something or not. I always collect samples of new products, which sometimes are given for free with the magazines, and I independently evaluate. Not all of them do what they promise or a suited for me. My opinion is more important and most times doesn’t coincide with the panel of (paid) experts.

All comes down to the lack of critical thinking of most part of the population, which affects the way people look at magazines, hear the news or reads newspapers. You cannot swallow images or information as if they were God’s word! I mean, I find people swallowing information/images the problem, the decreasing importance of education as a important way to grow as a person the problem, not the brainwashing that the magazines do. They brainwash us because we let them do so.

To put an example.When there is a new mascara advertised promising 50% more length in lashes you need to do something more than reading the statement. You have to look at the photo with clear eyes and, in most cases, you will notice that the model in the photo is clearly wearing false lashes, and that the rates of success aren’t based on clinical trials but on a psychological evaluation of a limited group of customers who were giving misleading non-objective questions. If you don’t do that, who is responsible for your deceit?

T – A very large and convincing body of research shows that messages influence our mind and behavior at an unconscious level, through priming and anchoring (read Danny Kahneman’s new book, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’). In other words, you cannot go through a woman’s magazine and not be influenced by it, regardless of how much discernment you have. It’s like saying you can eat a pint of ice cream and not get fat because you’re discerning. It just doesn’t work that way: you have already allowed the information into your head, the same way you allowed the calories in the ice cream into your body. The only way to keep out the influence is to avoid exposure altogether.

I slightly disagree. The way I see it, using your ice cream example is: If I read the label of a tub of ice-cream tub I have all the information there re calories and fat. Even if I don’t do so, I know it is very fattening. If then I eat the whole tub, what do you expect?. On the other hand, If have a small amount of ice-cream the calories can be absorbed and managed with my daily exercise routines and become a pleasure, so I can keep eating ice-cream and not getting fat. Should I totally deprive myself from ice-cream because, a priori, is fattening? Who is to blame for a ice-cream compulsive eater? The ice-cream producer or the eater?…

The lack of discernment is guilty of mass hysteria, of why media manipulates minds and stupid wars are sold as mascaras, or marketers use NLP to sell deodorants among other things. We have the responsibility of using our brains and getting in touch with our unconscious not only to get love. If we are aware of unconscious elements and learn to manage them. It is my personal experience, the one I see in myself. For that you don’t shut the world out there close, you just learn to manage it.